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Sucks to Suck

Written by: Mike Roza

October 2nd , 2016 was the end of an era in the sport of baseball. Sunday afternoon the man with stories for days, Vin Scully, retired after announcing his final game in San Francisco as the Dodgers were run out of town by a resilient San Francisco club that almost shit the bed in the second half to miss the playoffs after heading into the All Star break with the best record in Major League Baseball. Vinny has the voice of a God damned angel and I truly will miss him calling games for the boys in blue. Some of you casual baseball fans may not know this, especially since the sports media is focused primarily on the east coast, but October 2nd was also the final broadcast of another all-time great sports commentator. While the Dodgers took one to the chin and Vin made it sound interesting, this guy was busy calling a walk off win at Chase Field as his boys in navy blue went down for the ninety-fourth time this season. Yes, I am referring to Dick Enberg. Yes, up until Sunday, Dick Enberg was the play-by- play voice of the shit show San Diego Padres.

In case you guys forgot about Enberg, he was kind of a big deal for a long time in the sports broadcasting world since he began his career in the late 50’s. My first real memory of him as a child born in the late 80’s was from when I discovered my love of the sport of football while listening to him commentate for the NFL on NBC. This of course was back when NBC had the television rights to the AFC before they were bought out by CBS. Enberg also called Notre Dame Football on Saturdays for NBC, and later made some big calls during the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament for CBS. And, you know, he did spend time announcing our generations three must see spectator sports: horse racing, tennis, and golf. Back to the point of this diatribe, where it all comes full circle, Enberg had been with the Padres organization since 2010. As an avid baseball fan that spends gobs of money to watch out of market baseball each season, I have enjoyed listening to Enberg call the Padres for the past several years, despite the fact that from time to time he generally sounded disinterested during ballgames due to their inability to field competitive teams.

At the end of the day, Dick Enberg is in his eighties and is old as shit like Vin Scully, and it truly was the right time to step down from the booth. The man has won thirteen Sports Broadcasting Emmys and was voted Sportscaster of the Year by several different organizations. As a commentator he has received prestigious awards from the Basketball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, and National Baseball Hall of Fame. That is a feat that he alone shares with the late Curt Gowdy. Enberg was the man when it came to the broadcast booth. Like Scully, he had plenty of great stories ranging from his years of covering professional and collegiate sports. He had the innate ability to feed off of the fans to make his calls more memorable, so maybe that is why his time in San Diego failed in comparison to some of the bigger moments he had orated prior. It is truly sad that he chose 2016 to retire. Again, it was the right time, but he did so in the same state that Vin Scully has owned since the Dodgers moved out west to LA in ’58. On Sunday, and all of last week, we were fed one more dose of Scully nostalgia as he said his goodbyes to us baseball fans. And it just so happened that it was brought up by most sports programming in passing that one of the greatest sports broadcasters of all time said his goodbyes too. In passing. Sucks to suck.